Chem Lab: The Downside of Getting High on Nitrous Oxide

After inhaling laughing gas every day for ten years, a Taiwanese man started to develop bizarre neurological problems.

Whippets, his drug of choice, are small cylinders of nitrous oxide. They are purportedly used as a propellant for whipped cream. Recreational drug users (shown right) sometimes fill balloons with the gas and then inhale it repeatedly to obtain a brief high.

In November 2003, the Taiwanese man’s sense of touch became so faint that he could barely handle chopsticks. Even worse: he felt sensations similar to electrical shocks in his neck and legs.

At Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Chia-Yi Lin, Kwong-Kum Liao, and their colleagues examined their patient with an MRI scan. Part of his spinal column had degenerated. That was no surprise since laughing gas interferes with the production of myelin, a fatty coating that surrounds nerves and helps them send signals.

In the January 2007 issue of Clinical Toxicology, Lin and Liao explained that the gas inactivates vitamin B12 and the junkie was already running low on that nutrient. Daily doses of the gas for ten years worsened his dietary deficiency, leading to the severe neurological damage. At the end of their correspondence, the doctors did not say what became of their patient, but they made it clear that he was not alone.

The following September, a correspondence to the Medical Journal of Australiadescribed a 20-year-old woman that developed paralysis in her legs after inhaling ten to twenty canisters of whipped cream propellant per day for almost two weeks.

In this case, the young lady claimed that her actions were an attempt to cope with the pain of a sprained ankle, but she was no stranger to drug abuse. Before her nitrous oxide binge, the junkie had used heroin and enrolled in a methadone program. When she was found trapped in the back seat of a car, there were approximately sixty empty canisters at her feet.

Blood tests showed that her kidneys were failing, she was anemic, and her vitamin B12 was very low. With such a complicated set of symptoms, the doctors were unsure of what was wrong. As they sat their patient up to take a spinal fluid sample, her heart rate slowed to a deadly crawl. Responding quickly, the physicians revived the imperiled woman with CPR and transferred her to an intensive care unit.

Michaela Cartner, a doctor at Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane, said in her report that the patient recovered partially after receiving doses of vitamin B12 and the amino acid methionine. Both of those chemicals helped to rebuild the damaged myelin coating around her nerve fibers. Seven months later, and after an aggressive rehabilitation program, the unfortunate girl could walk again.

If you have any funny stories about nitrous oxide, please share them in the comments section below.